The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 74, July 1970 - April, 1971 Page: 282
616 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
The Navajo Mountain Community. By Mary Shepardson and Blodwen
Hammond. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. Pp.
ix + 278. Map, appendix, bibliography, index. $9.50.)
This monograph is primarily an anthropological study of the social
organization and kinship terminology of a remote Navajo reservation
community near Navajo Mountain, straddling the Arizon-Utah bor-
der. Secondarily, it is a study of the history of this community. The
authors, both social anthropologists, seek to demonstrate "structure"
(synchronic view) and "process" (diachronic view) in the study.
They handle the former well, but the historical perspective is not as
successful nor as detailed as their introduction claims.
A brief historical account of the community is provided in Part
One. Part Two examines social structure: membership groups, roles,
and kinship behavior, and is quite adequate as ethnography but
suffers as history because the authors merely describe. Part Three
analyzes kinship terminology which, while it is of anthropological in-
terest, historians will find tedious and of little interest.
In spite of the historical weakness of the book, it is a valuable
study for those interested in Southwest Indian history. By weaving
together documents with interviews from Navajos of all ages on
how and why actions were taken, the authors reveal the effects of
acculturation on three generations. They also provide another
dimension by comparing their materials on social structure gathered
between i 96o and 1966 with an earlier study of this same com-
munity done in 1938 by Malcolm Carr Collier. The geographical
isolation of the community, the authors claim, has resulted in less
acculturation here than in other parts of the reservation, thus their
study also provides a description of Navajo life for an earlier period
which any reconstruction of Navajo history cannot ignore. Although
this study does not read easily, the authors have done a fair job. The
work includes charts, tables, a glossary of Navajo names and kinship
terms, and an extensive bibliography.
University of Minnesota ROBERT E. BIEDER
Jose Antonio Navarro: Co-Creator of Texas. By Joseph Martin Daw-
son. (Waco: Baylor University Press, 1969. Pp. xiv + 127. Il-
lustrations, notes, index. $6.5o.)
Although Texas history is an extremely popular subject and some
portions of it have been overworked to the point of boredom, there282
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 74, July 1970 - April, 1971, periodical, 1971; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101200/m1/294/?rotate=270: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.